Fifty “pro-Palestine” students occupied the rectorate of the University of Turin on 21 May. A meeting of the Academic Senate was scheduled that day. The struggling students wanted to participate to express their demands. But, to avoid discussions and accidents, the rector Stefano Geuna decided to hold the meeting online. The students reacted by going to the rector’s office anyway and occupied it. “We will stay here until the senators and councilors show up for the in-person session,” they say.
Already occupied for several days, with consequent blocking of teaching activities, are Palazzo Nuovo, historic home of humanities degree courses, the Luigi Einaudi campus, the Polytechnic and the physics department. The occupiers set up tents “to represent the fact that we will not leave these places until we get what we ask for.” What they are asking for, as is known, is a boycott of Israeli universities which, according to them, the university must adopt “so as not to be said to be complicit in a genocide”. “The academic boycott – they argue – is the only tool to avoid being complicit in the war crimes of the State of Israel”.
The mass media and social networks publish their claims. The examination of texts, images and films raises some considerations. The first concerns the way in which, in harmony with the news from other universities, the facts are presented: with titles such as Even in Turin university students have decided to occupy the universities, Another day of mobilization for Turin students… Apart from the sloppiness of many articles in which they talk about occupied “faculties”, institutes that the Gelmini reform abolished in 2010, the idea evoked is of a general mobilization. Instead, there are a few hundred active students (plus representatives of social centers such as Askatasuna) out of a total of over 81 thousand enrolled at the University and 39,700 at the Polytechnic.
Of course it’s scandalous as always, although few, manage to block the lessons and, moreover, even though they could have foreseen that they would try, the Rectorate was not manned to prevent them from occupying it. It is scandalous, especially since nothing leads one to believe that they are the spokespersons of 120 thousand students or at least of a substantial part of them. In reality, and it is a fact to reflect on, the impression that they don’t even care about the follow-up and consensus of other students. “They” want this and that’s it.
They accuse the Israelis of genocide, a very serious accusation which has persecuted Israel for decades, during which time the inhabitants in Palestine went from 750 thousand, as many as they were in 1949 when the UN agency UNRWA was created for them, to the current 5.5 million. Not even life senator Liliana Segre, who in recent days contested the accusation of genocide against Israel, calling it “blasphemy”, would be able to convince them that they are wrong. On the other hand, the consolidated anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist tradition of the Turin university has borne fruit. One of the moments of most intense anti-Israeli activity occurred in 2008 when, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of its birth, Israel was chosen as the guest of honor by the organizers of the Book Fair. Several furious teachers called for a boycott of the event. A seminar was organized entitled Western democracies and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, in reality two days dedicated to accusing Israel of crimes against humanity committed with the complicity of the West, with a pounding, obsessive use of the terms “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing”, “holocaust”, “apartheid”, “torture ”. One of the speakers was Tariq Ramadan, grandson of Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The occupation of the Rectorate has been suspended, as an “opening sign”, on the evening of May 22nd. But a citizens’ meeting was organized at Palazzo Nuovo, announced with a poster made with Soviet propaganda colors and graphics. The colors and style of ISIS, the Islamic State, seem to have inspired the press releases. The occupation of the Rectorate was made known with a film in which three students list their demands, wearing keffiyeh, sitting at a table covered with a red cloth from which a Palestinian flag hangs. A black banner serves as their background. It is the upper part of an immense Palestinian flag, but it brings to mind the black insignia of ISIS, its black uniforms, and its leaders who in 2015 boasted on social networks saying that they would use their victory in Libya to invade the ‘Italy, attack the Vatican.
These guys who call themselves the “student intifada” are playing with firewho play jihad in the certainty that the enemy to be defeated is the West, today engaged in the “intifada” without a thought against Hamas, who continues to launch missiles at Israel and hold captive the hostages who have survived so far, who perhaps militate in the Friday for future and a month ago they shouted their contempt for the world that keeps them and recognizes them free to demonstrate brandishing banners reading “Climate justice against a denialist government” and in a month they will participate in Turin Pride, which this year has as its slogan “Of Love and Fight”, and they will mock bigoted Catholics by flaunting blasphemous gestures and images.
They play jihad. What they don’t know is that the jihadists, the real ones, would not spare them for this reason.
